The Pagani Huayra Roadster BC Is Pure Supercar Theatre

Supercars are a strange thing these days. In the era of the Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari Boxer, BMW M1 and the rest, supercars were objects of desire, hand built in small numbers by esoteric companies perpetually flirting with bankruptcy. Today Ferrari is one of the most valuable automakers in the world and Lamborghini makes a very nice contribution to the Volkswagen Group's bottom line.

So there are more supercars in the world than ever, and consequently, the sight of one isn't quite the event it once was. Lamborghini has built well over 10,000 examples of the Aventador, while it only managed to make 2000 Countachs.

Seeing a Pagani Huayra, though? That's an event.

We get to try out a lot of cool cars at R&T, but the opportunity to drive a Pagani comes around only once every decade or so. Unfortunately for us, it came on a rainy Tuesday morning in bustling Greenwich, Connecticut, not the ideal scenario for a car with a 791-hp twin-turbo V-12 and just two well-worn Pirelli Trofeo Rs to deal with all that power. (The photos here were shot the next day, right before the car headed to a fancy Manhattan party.) The only honest thing to do was to treat it like the event that it is.

This is the Huayra Roadster BC, the open-top version of the track-focused BC model. Everyone at Pagani referred to it as the RBC, which has a nice ring to it. The car is an exquisite thing, with its central monocoque made from carbon fiber woven with titanium, steel tubular space frames front and rear, and carbon fiber body panels. With all the clamshells opened, it's hard not to think of later Group C prototypes, especially the Sauber-Mercedes cars which founder Horacio Pagani named as an inspiration.

But a race car is a single-purpose tool. A Huayra RBC is more like a piece of art, or rather, many pieces of art bolted together into something vaguely resembling a transportation device. Pagani's thing is attention to detail, and every component of this car is lovingly designed and made, from the beautifully sprung gear selector to the very bolts, each made from titanium and stamped with the Pagani logo. You approach a Pagani like you do a painting or sculpture, reveling in the perfect little details yet appreciating their contribution to the object as a whole. I could almost understand why you'd buy one just to admire it in your garage.

Almost. The Huayra still has an AMG V-12 right up against the rear bulkhead, and it deserves to be run. And running the Huayra is charmingly old-school. The steering is a particular highlight, offering levels of communication unmatched by pretty much anything else on sale today. It seems strange to compare the Huayra to cheaper cars, but it's high praise to say the steering brings to mind McLaren and Lotus, which remain the benchmark for steering feel. And the steering is pleasantly weighty, too, a nice change of pace from the over-light wheels we now get from Ferrari.